Every car.
Every street.
Recorded.
Flock Safety cameras photograph every vehicle that passes — not just suspects — logging where you drive, when, and storing it in a searchable database shared far beyond your town.
Most Illinois residents never knew their community signed a contract.
What the cameras collect
Flock Safety is a surveillance company whose automated license-plate readers (ALPRs) are used by thousands of police departments, towns, and even homeowners' associations — increasingly across Illinois. Each camera records far more than a plate. You don't have to be suspected of anything.
Your plate
Read and logged on every pass, day and night, automatically.
A "vehicle fingerprint"
Make, body type, and color — plus marks like bumper stickers, roof racks, or damage.
Where & when
Each scan stamped with a precise time and location — a timeline of your movements.
Stored & searchable
Kept 30 days by default — longer in many places — and searchable by anyone with access.
The overwhelming majority of vehicles scanned belong to ordinary people who have done nothing wrong.
It isn't one camera. It's a web.
A single reader is just the entry point. Flock's value to agencies is the network — and that is exactly what makes it a privacy problem.
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1
Capture
Pole-mounted cameras photograph every vehicle on the road — continuously, with no officer present.
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2
Store
Scans flow into a central, searchable database. Investigators can pull a plate's location history or hunt for vehicles by description.
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3
Share
Many agencies opt into a nationwide network — so a camera in your town can be searched by departments in other cities and other states.
“A camera bought to watch one neighborhood quietly becomes a node in a coast-to-coast tracking system — with no warrant, and no public vote.”
Why it matters
Tracking everyone, all the time, just in case, flips the presumption of innocence. Journalists and civil-liberties groups including the EFF and ACLU have documented real harms.
Mass location tracking
A searchable map of where residents go — to church, the clinic, a protest, a partner's home.
Data shared far and wide
Access has reached well beyond local police — including outside and federal agencies, often without residents' knowledge.
Mission creep
Sold to fight serious crime, ALPR data has been queried for far lower-stakes — and more troubling — reasons.
Breaches & exposure
Misconfigured cameras and feeds have been left open online. Centralized data is a target.
No real oversight
Contracts are often signed with little public notice, no audit requirements, and no way to opt out.
A chilling effect
When people know their movements are logged, they self-censor. That is a cost to a free society.
Close to home
This is happening across Illinois — often without a public vote.
Flock cameras are spreading rapidly through Illinois communities. In many towns the contract was approved by a city council or signed by a police chief with little notice and almost no public debate. Most residents have no idea the cameras exist, how long the data is kept, or who it is shared with.
Is your town watched? Community researchers map known ALPR cameras at deflock.me. Look up your area — then help us hold your council accountable.
Straight answers
Isn't this just for catching criminals?
The cameras record everyone, not just suspects. The vast majority of scans are of innocent people going about their lives — all stored and searchable. You shouldn't have to be tracked to prove you've done nothing wrong.
Who can actually see my data?
It varies by agency, but access frequently extends well beyond your local police department through Flock's sharing network — to other towns, other states, and in documented cases, outside and federal agencies.
Is this even legal?
ALPRs operate in a legal gray area with little regulation or oversight, and generally without a warrant. That's exactly why local decisions — your city council's vote, your town's retention and sharing policy — matter so much.
I have nothing to hide. Why should I care?
Privacy isn't about hiding wrongdoing — it's about not having a permanent, searchable record of your every movement held by people you'll never meet. Today it's plates; the same infrastructure expands easily. The time to set limits is now.
What can I actually do about it?
Plenty. Add your name, write to or show up at your city council, file an Illinois FOIA request to expose your town's contract, and spread the word. Local pressure has already paused or rolled back ALPR programs elsewhere.
Take action
Help take our privacy back.
We're building a town-by-town petition so every Illinois city council hears from its own residents. It launches soon — get on the list and we'll tell you the moment it's live.
Petition launching soon. Until then, the fastest way to join is to email us — we read every message.